Ecological as well as energy and natural resources preservation considerations play a more and more intensive roll in the direction of altering the traditional processing methods relating to the collection and discarding of domestic garbage. One of the main developments has been expressed by State or Municipal Regulations, directed to enforce a change in the collection habits of the public. In general, directives has been issued in more and more countries to compel the individual households to perform a selection or sorting of the garbage into two or more classes, each requesting a separate type of treatment. The sorting of the garbage at its source enabled a subsequently different treatment of every class in a more economic manner with regard to the processing thereof, be it complete discarding (burning, burying), recycling or reusing. Sorting at the source became a milestone in the struggle of mankind towards less pollution and waste of precious energy.
At present, the pre-sorting of garbage is effected in a most primitive fashion, namely that the household owner puts one class into a first container, another class into a second container, etc.; the containers are usually plastic bags, which are then carried down to the building collecting location and put into separate receptacles, from which they are emptied into the garbage trucks, during their usual rounds on their way to the dump site. The containers of the different classes are distinctly marked, to facilitate their subsequent separation and different methods of treatment.
A further development or refinement of this approach has been introduced concerning a garbage collecting timetable imposed by the municipal authorities, limiting the collection to once or twice a week, compelling the citizens to conform by allowing the garbage to be taken out only at the night, preceding the prescribed collection day.
This compulsive garbage handling routine imposes a considerable amount of inconvenience on the public at large. It is therefore the prime object of the present invention to improve the pre-sorting operation of garbage in making it more convenient--and thereby more likely to be adhered to by the public--and more economic regarding the handling at the garbage dump sites.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an improved container for use in the proposed method.
It is a still further object of the invention to introduce minimum changes into the present, conventional routine of garbage collection, as well as at the garbage dump sites.